Golden Girl's check shines light on Bar fight

Bob Brewer should be grateful to the Golden Girl for far more than the $700 she donated to his campaign for district attorney.

He should thank his former client for starting a crucial thought process before the blitzkrieg begins.

A check from the former Nancy Hoover, ex-Del Mar mayor and dashing consort of Ponzi schemer J. David Dominelli — an ‘80s saga well-chronicled in Don Bauder’s “Captain Money and the Golden Girl” — was a gift to the Dumanis campaign, a shiny object for media magpies.

Here was Exhibit A suggesting that Brewer, a white-collar defense attorney, is unfit to be the DA.

“This is a wake-up call to voters,” the Dumanis campaign trumpeted, “that Bob Brewer made millions on the backs of victims by defending some of San Diego’s most notorious crooks and con artists the last 30 years.”

I called a political consultant and asked him if he would have accepted the donation. No, he said, it’s a “distraction.” (That’s the worldly logic that drove Brewer’s wife, retired federal Judge Irma Gonzalez, to withdraw her probably legal donation to an independent PAC supporting Brewer.)

The Brewer campaign, managed by Tom Shepard, a consultant with his own ties to Captain Money, no doubt knew the donation could bite them. But this was a distraction with a silver lining a month before mail-in voting begins.

Remember, the conflation of the sins of a defendant with the character of his/her lawyer amounts to fighting words among defense attorneys. (This often comes up during big murder cases.)

The freighted question behind the Dumanis charge can, by extension, apply to the whole Defense Bar:

Is a high-octane defense attorney (albeit one with significant prosecutorial experience early in his career) morally disqualified to be DA?

Thanks to Hoover, a Bar fight has broken out to settle the rare political issue.

The legal community is being forced to survey the line between prosecutor and defender. (Primary dark horse Terri Wyatt, a career prosecutor, hopes the border conflict will turn ugly and send votes her way.)

In coming weeks, incumbent Bonnie Dumanis will be blistered over the scandal involving a Mexican businessman who allegedly poured illegal money into her mayoral campaign and with whom she broke bread.

Given that vulnerability, which Brewer likely will exploit to the hilt, she’ll be motivated to hit back hard.

But if Dumanis drives home the message that only a bad person defends bad people, voters at least will have had time to judge the merits sans lurid imagery.

In Brewer’s ideal campaign, Hoover’s relatively small contribution will help inoculate him from a terribly tempting, and possibly deadly, line of attack.